'People don't care about the Royals' Republican's SHOCK claim monarchy is losing support

THE British Royal Family has very little left to win the public over and fight wishes to scrap the monarchy despite the hype surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Royal Wedding, claimed a campaign groups CEO.

Speaking to Julia Hartley-Brewer on TalkRadio, Graham Smith claimed British people will only watch the Royal Wedding on TV on Saturday as they will already be home to watch the football later in the day.

The CEO of Republic, a group campaigning for the abolition of the British monarchy, argued a new YouGov poll shows British people do not care about the Royal Family because they support the monarchy, but are only interested in the glamour and celebrity aspect of it.

He said: “The poll YouGov put out which we commissioned at the beginning of the week said that two-thirds of the population aren’t interested.

“A lot of people will be casually watching it, they will be on tv, they will be maybe staying at home catching the football later on the day so it will be on, so the views figures will be up.

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Royal Wedding 2018: Republican Graham Smith claims British people are not bothered with the Royals

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean people are fascinated by the whole thing or by the glamour."

Asked if he believed the Royal Family is at risk of becoming mere celebrities for Britons, he replied: “I think it’s very risky. People aren’t bothered about Royalty per se or the monarchy as a form of Government or anything like that.

“It is celebrity and celebrity culture is very fickle, celebrity media is very fickle.

“They’re kind of running out of these big occasions now. There’s not a lot left for them to do.

“They had seven years of these occasions and the polling hasn’t really shifted.”

They had seven years of these occasions and the polling hasn’t really shifted

Graham Smith

Despite Mr Smith's predictions, in 2011 VisitBritain recorded a 40 per cent surge in overseas visitors when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge married while in 2016 the Queen’s official residences – including Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle – attracted 2.8million people.

The Republican has often argued against statistics showing an increase in Royal-related-tourism in Britain claiming it would continue to attract people from around the world despite the Royals' future status.

He said: "Castles are still going to be there when we get rid of the monarchy. There’s no impact on the economy of having a monarchy.

"There’s no evidence of this at all. I met with the people of VisitBritain in 2011, I put to them if we got rid of the monarchy there’s no evidence tourism would go down and they conceded on that point.

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"I think 25per centof the country had no strong opinion whether they would mind if the monarchy disappeared. We are not a country of Republicans, people haven’t been persuaded yet that we should get rid of it but we are not a country of Royalists either."

More than 60,000 visitors will cram into Windsor ahead of the wedding, including tourists from as far afield as the United States, Canada and New Zealand.

Kassie Courson, from Macomb, Illinois, who visited Windsor with her husband Ron for the wedding rehearsal, said: "Even though it's only a rehearsal, it's wonderful.

"It's really whetted our appetite for the real thing. We love everything royal and we're just delighted to be here. We wouldn't have missed it for anything."